


Multitudes of Amy’s

by scroogesnephew



Category: Company - Sondheim/Furth
Genre: 1970’s, Alcohol Mentions, Alternate Timelines, Animal Shelter AU, Canon Era, Drug Mentions, First Meeting, High School AU, New Neighbors AU, meet cute
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-06-28 03:44:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19804030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scroogesnephew/pseuds/scroogesnephew
Summary: Amy and Bobby are best friends. How did they meet? It seems like they’ve met a thousand different ways, in a thousand different lifetimes...





	1. Moving Day

**Author's Note:**

> This will be a series of one-shots exploring possible ways Amy and Bobby may have met and become best friends. There may be romance; there may be platonic affection. Other characters from the show may make cameos. :) I haven’t got all the stories planned out yet, and just hope to add new “chapters” as inspiration strikes. Enjoy!

Amy struggled up the steps of her new apartment for what felt like the 27th time that day, arms too full with her last load of personal possessions. She’d carried in most of the essentials first - the potted plants, fishbowl, bead curtain, and lava lamp - before moving on to the frivolities: bedding, clothing, furniture. Now she was attempting to bump one final over-full bookcase up the three cement steps, to at least get it inside the door. Sweat ran from her forehead and pooled under her chin. Her t-shirt, soft but motheaten after years of wear, was drenched in sweat, and her hair began to whirl out in manic, unrestrained curls. If her mother were there, the entire moving process would need to be paused in order to straighten out Amy’s untamable hair and make it presentable again. For a brief moment, Amy was glad to be moving singlehandedly.

That gratitude fled as quickly as it arrived. As soon as Amy coaxed one leg of the bookcase up onto the second stair, and dared breathe a sigh of relief, one of the bookcase’s shelves collapsed. 20 or so books tumbled all over the ground, landing open at odd angles on the cement and in the dirt. She dropped the bookcase, letting the whole thing tumble to the ground gracelessly.

Then she buried both hands in her curls, and uttered a positively guttural shriek of frustration to the heavens.

Followed by a not-exactly-Catholic stream of curse words.

Just inside, on the first floor, a man of about Amy’s age rushed from his apartment to investigate.

“Woah. Hi. I just came to - is everything - are you okay?” the man stammered, noting the dangerous cocktail of frenzied rage storming in the strange woman’s blue eyes.

“Everything is wonderful,” she exhaled, closing her eyes. “Things are going spectacularly and exactly according to plan. Thank you so much for asking.”

“You must be moving in upstairs.” He sounded amused, but there was a softness in his voice that betrayed his kindness.

“I am,” Amy said, and stopped pinching the bridge of her nose when she realized she was being rude. “Yes. Hello. My name is Amy, I’m going to be your neighbor, and I desperately wish I’d made a better first impression.” She shook his hand, smiling grimly. The man laughed.

“It’s good to meet you, Amy. I’m Bobby. Let me help you with these, huh?” He raised his eyebrows, and she nodded permission. He began to scoop up the books on the ground, piling in his arms titles that referenced psychology, counseling, and several mental illnesses he’d never even heard of.

“So, uh - are you aspiring to be an analyst or something?”

“That’s the dream,” she grunted, still hauling the heavy bookcase to its feet. “Of course I don’t know if they allow you to be a psychiatrist and HAVE a psychiatrist, so I get all my therapy done the old-fashioned way.”

“Oh yeah?” Bobby stacked the shelf back into the bookcase diagonally, then layered the books until they wedged crisply between the empty spaces. He lifted the lower half of the bookcase without warning, and the sudden loss of weight made Amy stumble. “What’s the old-fashioned way?”

She met his eyes. “Giving away all my secrets to strangers, I guess.” Then she looked away again, reaching backwards with one hand for the door handle. Together they maneuvered the bookcase inside and began to lift it up the creaky wooden stairs to her second-floor apartment.

“Well, I’m not a stranger anymore,” Bobby winked at her from four stairs below. “You know my name.”

“I suppose we ARE going to be neighbors.”

“Not for too long, though,” Bobby admitted through gritted teeth as Amy reached the top of the stairs and the weight grew heavier. “I’m - hnngh - my lease is ending in just under two months.”

“Well, I hope - ahh, careful now - I hope my future neighbors are just as strong and helpful as you are,” she let her end of the bookcase straighten as Bobby reached the top of the stairs. “Thank you, Bobby. I can take it from here.”

He swept a lock of brown hair out of his eyes, and she tried to discern their color - were they dark blue? Brown? Hazel? Grey? It was impossible to tell in the dim yellow hallway lighting. The smell of stale carpet and cigarettes permeated the air, and one fly cheerfully buzzed out its own death march from inside the dirty ceiling light.

“Man. All that work and I still don’t get asked in for a drink, huh?” he teased.

“I don’t really have classy drinks.”

“I don’t really drink classy drinks.”

“Well, really, I have nothing at the moment. I personally disappeared my whole stock before moving, unfortunately.”

“Then how about you let me help you finish moving, and then you come downstairs to my apartment and have one of my terribly un-classy drinks.”

She squinted at him. “Are you this nice to everyone, Bobby?”

“Only to people who look like they could very much use a drink,” Bobby laughed. “And I think you deserve two. Have you been moving everything yourself?”

“Oh, yes, let me show you - “ she said, and unlocked the apartment door, swinging it wide. Inside, arranged in no particular order, were all the trappings of a real hippie’s apartment. The hanging egg chair. Posters flung, for now, on the floor, littered with female symbols and rainbows and raised fists and punchy slogans. And, most impressive of all, cardboard boxes full of records stacked nearly to the ceiling.

“I did all this without anyone’s help,” she crossed her arms and smiled, surveying her work. “Proud of me?”

“Extremely. A little scared you’re gonna incite a revolution or something, but, mostly proud.”

“Oh, you’re right about that. A revolution is on the horizon, neighbor.” She winked. “Be prepared.”

“Yeah, alright, beatnik,” he shook his head. “Take a break from moving and come down for a drink with me.”

She did. Amy and Bobby had bourbon, then wine, then tequila - drinking like college kids, in no particular order and with no regard for societal standards. When Bobby offered to split a joint with her, Amy accepted. They talked all evening, late into the night - sharing a couch, Amy hugging her knees and Bobby stretching out his legs. They talked about why they’d chosen to move here, to this part of New York, what college had been like for both of them, what their families were like, and so on. When Amy’s eyes grew too droopy to stay open anymore and her words slurred to the warm whisper of sleep, Bobby took a blanket from his bed and covered her.

The next morning, she was up and gone early, and Bobby awoke to find a hot breakfast of bacon, eggs, and somewhat-burnt toast sitting on his kitchen table, along with a glass of orange juice and a note scrawled on blue paper.

“Thanks for being such a good neighbor. I wish you were sticking around longer. Also, if you are a vegan I apologize for this very offensive meal.” In the bottom corner, a tiny dark arrow indicated the reader should flip the note over. “PS. I hope you are an early riser, otherwise this orange juice is hot.  
-Amy”

Bobby, drinking the warm orange juice at the moment he read these words, sputtered and poured the rest into the sink, laughing to himself.

He returned the plate, outside her door (she kept her apartment locked, unlike him) with a batch of cookies on it. “Amy, Come over anytime you like. It’s good to meet someone cool in this city after all this time.” An arrow pointed to the back. “PS. I think we are the only two non-vegans left in New York.  
-Bobby”

They passed the plate back and forth like this a few more times before Amy came over again. Soon, though, it became a nightly tradition - they simply came to expect that they’d spend their evenings with each other. Sometimes they’d play card games. Usually they’d just talk. Amy still kept her apartment locked, but she started leaving a key under her peace-sign doormat for Bobby to use if he needed it. When it made sense, sometimes they did each other’s dishes, found other ways to help brighten the other’s life. Bobby brought an enormous bouquet of daisies three days before he was meant to move out. He asked for Amy’s help in packing.

Instead of moving across town, like he’d planned, he moved upstairs into Amy’s apartment. They split the rent. It only made sense - they spent half their nights in each other’s lodgings anyway.

Even though Amy kept her bed and Bobby stayed on his couch, separated fully by walls and doors, they both secretly felt that they slept better - felt more protected, somehow - knowing they were here with the person who was rapidly becoming their best friend.


	2. A Way With the Unlovable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bobby, volunteering at an animal shelter, has a way with all cats - except one. He’s determined to win its friendship. He wins someone else’s instead.

Community service? For a speeding ticket?

It was an idea so stupid Bobby had to stop himself from rolling his eyes permanently into his skull when the judge suggested it. He wanted to argue, to say he had no time in his schedule, that he’d rather pay the $100 fine and have it done with.

But his bank account, overdrawn for the second week in a row, disagreed.

So, Bobby, broke and more than a little disgruntled, went about finding the easiest, most trite, loopholiest community service he could muster the strength to put himself through: volunteering at one of New York City’s most underfunded animal shelters.

Squashed in between a hair salon and a convenience store in a Puerto Rican barrio, the shelter’s front door was freckled with graffiti. The sign noting their hours was a mostly-white perfume advertisement torn from an old magazine, stuck up with one raggedy strip of masking tape, scrawled on in pen in one of the blanker sections. “Mon-Sat 8-8. Sun closed.”

The place was barely even an animal shelter, once you got inside. Bobby met the owner, who cheerfully introduced him to the shelter’s boarders: 10 cats of all colors and sizes, slinking around the back room, a labyrinth of homemade yarn toys and cardboard castles. The place smelled...well, like it housed 10 cats, and a thick layer of dust coated every surface above 5 feet tall (the owner was a rather short man.) Cats played with dead and dying flies buzzing on their backs in the corners of the room.

The one redeeming factor here was this: Bobby was a cat person.

This was a fact which Bobby would only think of admitting aloud on his deathbed, and maybe not even then. 

But he had a way with cats. The owner noted Bobby’s pleased grin when one of the cats bopped his head against Bobby’s hand and purred. “He’s our nicest boy. Always been so sociable. Your job will involve watering and feeding the cats, of course, but also socializing them to make sure they’re ready to be adopted. And they’re not all as friendly as the Captain here. You may find it’s more difficult than you - “

And then the owner trailed off, because nine cats were swarming Bobby with overwhelming love. Bobby laughed as three cats leapt from shelves to perch on his shoulders, a few more weaved through his ankles, and the last ones stretched their long legs up to pad at his pockets and mew for his attention. He scratched all their heads and a chorus of purrs seemed to rumble the shelter’s walls.

The owner laughed. “Okay, maybe I was wrong. I hope you have just as much luck with Boo Radley.”

Bobby looked up.

“Our grouchiest cat,” the owner nearly winced an apology. “He has his own room. He doesn’t really like anyone. I got the scars to prove it.” He held up his fist, looking grim.

Bobby smiled one of those smiles so radiant, so sure of itself, it beamed light in every direction. “I can get Boo Radley to like me. He’ll be adoptable in no time.”

As it turned out, this was more difficult than Bobby anticipated.

Bobby visited the shelter every day between work shifts. He scooped cat litter and hauled the bags to the overflowing metal garbage cans out back. He’d sweep the floors afterward to clear out any leftover crystals, and some of the cats would make a game of it, chasing the broom bristles across the hard floor. He learned which cats dove in, full-body, to the food dishes when he filled them, and learned to save a little kibble in his palm for the shy ones, so he could hand-feed them while the others devoured what was in the bowl.

He didn’t even meet Boo Radley for three weeks.

When he did, he almost jumped out of his skin.

He closed the door to the cats’ playroom and there behind him, glaring from a high shelf like a furious priest behind a pulpit, was what must have been Boo Radley but what looked instead like a demonic spirit who took on the vague shape of a cat. He was grey and enormous with yellow kerosene-lamp eyes and...were those eyebrows? Angry eyebrows?

“Hi Boo,” Bobby said quietly, and then tested out one of his trademark smiles, gently pushing out his closed hand for the cat to sniff.

Three minutes later, Bobby wiped up the last of the blood from his hand with the shelter’s short supply of paper towels.

And that set it. His goal crystallized. His community service requirement would be over soon, but he wouldn’t leave this place until he got Boo Radley to love him.

And so he came back, day after day, week after week. On Sundays when the shelter was closed, Bobby took to going to the convenience store at the next door over to look for cat treats, or things he might turn into cat toys. Coming up short on the latter, he shredded some old tshirts of his into scraps and braided pieces together until he had several soft rope toys. The cats all adored them - all but one. Surprise.

And slowly, too, the cats started to get adopted. Bobby would stay longer and longer, as long as he could without being late to his second work shift of the day, and he’d see families come in and carefully select a cat from the wriggling pile, hug it close while they filled out the paperwork and tossed the owner a few $10 bills.

Finally, there was only one left. Unchosen, unadoptable Boo Radley, whom Bobby hadn’t yet been able to win over.

The owner, whose name was Bernardo, finally had to break the news. “Listen, with only one cat right now, I don’t actually need volunteers. I can feed him myself. You’ve been a great help, Bobby. But you’re young. Go out, go meet people. You’re in New York City for god’s sake; you shouldn’t be crammed up here in a shelter every day of your life.”

His quest incomplete and his confidence wounded, Bobby left the shelter. He stopped in Central Park between work shifts. Aimless. He needed to get some fresh air, see some light besides the buzzing fluorescents of the shelter. He’d sit on the same bench every time, never bothering to look for the inlaid tourist traps, the waterfalls, the statues. Sullenly eat a sandwich and a bag of chips, purchased each day from the convenience store next to the shelter. A place he’d grown stupidly nostalgic for now that he couldn’t go back. He’d sit on his bench and breathe deep, trying to take in one of the most essential parts of New York but failing to see what was so special about a man-made section of trees and grass.

And then one day, he saw something.

Almost fell off the bench trying to get up, race toward the girl, who was taking long runner’s strides like she was in a hurry. There, at the end of the blue leash she was holding, was the wrathful cloud himself, Boo Radley.

“Hey! Hey, wait! Hold up!” Bobby called after them, and when they didn’t hear he broke into a run.

He caught her by the shoulder and she spun toward him, startled, and then suspicious. “I don’t want to buy anything you’re selling.”

“I...what?” He reeled. “No. That’s...no, I just wanted - you have my cat,” he finished weakly, incompetently, and could have smacked himself in the head for how childish the words sounded tumbling from his mouth.

“Your cat? This is my cat.”

“No but it’s - his name is Boo Radley, right? He’s a hermit? Hates people?”

Her eyebrows rocketed upward. “His name is Boo Radley, sí. But he doesn’t hate people. He’s very friendly.” To demonstrate, she scooped him into her arms, all 20 pounds of him, and he began a low and grumbling purr. Bobby’s mouth fell open.

“How did you - I’m sorry, I must...have the wrong cat.”

“But how did you know his name?” she asked. The suspicion was gone from her voice and now replaced by genuine curiosity.

“I...” he scratched the back of his neck, blushing. “I volunteered at that little animal shelter down the street for the past couple of months. I know Boo Radley very well. But I was told he was unadoptable. And he never, ever liked me,” Bobby tried to cut the pout out of his voice but it came through anyway. “You must be a hell of a cat person.”

“Actually, no,” she admitted. “Most cats are completely indifferent to me. This guy came right up to me the second I walked in the shelter and started just smothering me with love. I figured he had to have been taken care of by someone...someone really kind,” she said, and graced him with a smile. It wasn’t one of those beaming smiles like his; it was small and hesitant, but true.

“Thanks,” he couldn’t help but smile back.

“You can pet him,” she said, nodding toward the cat. 

“Oh no.”

“No, really, he’s very sweet!”

“Oh no he is not. Not to me. Not to anyone.”

“He is the nicest cat I’ve ever met!”

“Maybe just to you. You must have a way with the unlovable.”

At this, she laughed. A real, loud laugh that scared a few fat pigeons away.

“I like your assessment of my character. My name is Amy.”

“Bobby.”

She set the cat down on the sidewalk, his leash still looped around her wrist, and shook Bobby’s hand. “It’s good to meet you, Bobby.”

And something - nothing short of a miracle - happened. Boo Radley, former hermit, curled up on Bobby’s shiny brown loafers and began to purr.

Bobby looked at Amy with an expression that can only be described in exclamation points. She laughed again.

“See, I told you he was friendly. You just had to be patient with him.”

“I’ve known this cat for months.”

“Some creatures require a little more time to decide if they trust you,” she squinted, sticking her tongue out. “But he seems to like you a lot. Look at him.”

They both observed the cat for a second, tossing and purring on the ground, leaving fur all over the ankles of Bobby’s pants.

“Listen,” Amy said slowly, “it seems like you really like this cat.”

Bobby nodded.

“And you miss him.”

Another nod.

“Why don’t you - “ she scrambled in her purse for a pen and a journal, which she tore a page from to scribble a phone number on “ - call me, if you ever want to visit Boo again?” She pressed the number into his open palm.

“Is this how you pick up dudes? Bring your angry cat to the park and make them feel validated when he warms up to them?”

“That depends. Is it working?” She laughed again. “No. But it is how I make friends.”

“Didn’t your mom ever tell you not to talk to strangers?”

“Only every single day of my life. She’s a Puerto Rican mom; she can’t help it. But she doesn’t really mean it. We live in New York City and our neighbors are like our family. Bernardo at the shelter, he’s like everyone’s uncle. Besides, I trust my gut instinct.”

“About me?”

“About everyone. I knew Boo was a good cat. I know you’re a good person.” She shrugged, still smiling faintly. “Call me, if you want to hang out with Boo. I need to go and take him on his walk.” She saluted Bobby, then turned on her heel and headed off down the sidewalk at that same brisk pace. She disappeared over the hill.

Bobby called her that night.

And soon he called every night. Sometimes not even to come over and visit Boo, sometimes just to ask her how her day was or tell her a story.

And Amy, former hermit herself, began to warm up to this Bobby person. Slowly, slowly, but surely.

It wasn’t until she asked Bernardo about him - and got a ringing endorsement of his character - that she agreed to go out with Bobby with no pretense, no reason at all.

Three years later, after surviving the move into Amy and Bobby’s first shared apartment, and their next one, and their next, the lionhearted Boo Radley - a senior citizen even when he was adopted - passed away. It was impossible to say who cried hardest for him at the illegal, makeshift funeral the pair of them held in Central Park (in the dark, in some corner near the waterfalls.)

Bobby wasn’t an artist, but he handed Amy the appropriate paints and brushes the day they painted a mural of that cat on the glass door of the shelter. Boo Radley was hideous in life, but Amy’s mural made him look regal, heroic.

She had a way with the unlovable - not just to love them, but to make everyone else see their value, too.

From his place of honor on the door, Boo looked up at Amy and Bobby’s apartment every day. They liked to think he’d be happy, knowing he had made inseparable best friends out of the only two humans he’d ever liked.


	3. The One With the High School Carnival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amy has just moved to a new school, and is heading up the student council as an ambitious young sophomore. Bobby is accidentally on Homecoming Court and is required to be the Palm Reader at the school carnival. Things do not go as smoothly as either of them hoped for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Writing this has made me want to start a full-fledged High School AU for these characters ASAP.)

A genuine palm reader - and there are real ones - can tell a lot about a person by their hands.

Bobby was not a genuine palm reader.

What he WAS was inexplicably-voted-onto-the-Homecoming-Court his sophomore year of high school, and consequently a reluctant inheritor of the honorable position of Palm Reader at the Homecoming Carnival.

(Inexplicably, that is, as long as you didn’t know there were girls in the student council who, enamored, clamored for his attention in a way they likely thought coy but which in reality resembled the pursuit of a raccoon by rabid dogs. Girls who, in the stubborn belief that all was fair in love and war, used their dubious moral compasses to do things like rig Homecoming Court elections.)

The professions of the other members of the court were represented thusly:  
for the Freshmen - Hot Dog Griller  
for the Juniors - Prize-Wheel Host  
for the Seniors - Dunk Tank Captain

and they all took up their posts nobly in the school’s backyard, which blared headache-inducing sunlight all afternoon.

The line began within the claustrophobic gym (whose walls seemed to sweat with the ghosts of a thousand adolescents long-graduated) and stretched all the way outside. The all-male Homecoming court had been a tradition at their school for one reason only: it was the singular way to get people to buy tickets. Girls came to visit the stations of the cute guys; boys came lured in by the false sense of safety brought on by the presence of four better-looking, more-popular and less-accessible boys. Attendees could wear whatever they wanted: tshirts, flip flops, short-shorts, all fair game on Carnival day. But the four Court members had to wear suits, and the king and queen wore their dancing best.

The other court members melted miserably in the sweltering sun. Bobby didn’t. He reclined in a shady corner, beneath the two trees the school possessed. His “booth” was nothing more than an arrangement of chairs, obscured from view by wide strips of gauzy fabric cut fresh from the craft store by the mom of one of the lesser student council girls. Lavender, rose, cornflower - they hung like tapestries and the effect was something close to beautiful when the breeze rippled them.

Once the onslaught of students made their way to the outside, Bobby worried the swarm would descend. Granted, there were plenty of other places for students to go - real carnival rides and games operated by real carneys - but Bobby’s newfound popularity was sure to attract customers.

So he thought.

Aside from the two overzealous student council girls, who bore sticker nametags written in that bubbly, curlicue penmanship girls loved so well then, and who carried clipboards and made excuses to keep checking in on Bobby to offer him lemonade, he hadn’t had one taker.

Amy bit the inside of her cheek and frowned. The lines were too long. Even the rusty Ferris Wheel that groaned with the effort of rotation was a mega-hit, but the crowd would soon grow tired of waiting in the 95 degree heat, and leave - and not buy nearly enough elephant ears and popcorn and pizza to earn the student council back its money.

The attendees should have divided out evenly. There was one area not taking in its fair share of customers, the area Amy’s two assistants had just returned from, giggling and blushing.

“Nancy. Kiki. Why isn’t anyone visiting our palm reader?”

Sheepish, one of them spoke up. “He, um, doesn’t actually know how to read palms. That’s what he told us.”

“That’s why it was his job to study it before today,” Amy blanched. “He had one job.”

“He also said he doesn’t believe in it and that it’s an affront to his religion. I think he was joking, though,” said the other girl.

Amy exhaled slowly. “Thank you, ladies,” she said, and marched her full 5’0 height over to the gauzy canopy she’d assembled that morning.

Amy was a sophomore, too, but she had skipped a grade, so she somehow looked even smaller than she was, with overwhelming blue eyes the centerpiece of a squirrelly face she hadn’t grown into yet. When she moved to this school a month ago, she immediately joined the student council and brought with her the fire and brimstone energy of the leader she’d been at her old school. And now, in her first major project at her new school, everything needed to go just right. And it wasn’t. And that was this Bobby person’s fault, whoever he was.

“Excuse me, Bobby?”

“Yello,” was the first word out of his mouth, and Amy hated him, hated him the way you’d hate sipping poison, hated him more than she thought it possible to hate a human being.

She glowered and annunciated each word deliberately. “Did you do even the slightest bit of research about palm-reading before arriving here today.”

He laughed, a nervous edge in his eyes. “Um, no?”

“And why not?”

He continued. “Uh, because this is a one-day event and I’ll literally never have to do this again in my whole life.”

“But you do have to do it today. That’s part of the honor.”

“Gotta be honest,” he sucked air through his teeth, “it really feels less like an honor and more like free labor.”

Amy inhaled, about to respond, and he went on. “And besides, this stuff, all this carnival stuff,” he waved a hand nonchalantly, “makes me cringe. It’s the height of dorkiness. It’s something only huge nerds would ever care about, and everyone else is just going because they feel obligated, and - “

He could see this had wounded her, and cut his own words off. Her blue eyes swam with the effort of holding in tears. He thought she might throw down the book she’d been clinging to, throw a tantrum, cuss him out, storm off. But she did none of these things. Quietly, she set the book into his lap and said, “Well. If you change your mind, you can borrow this.”

She turned on her heel and jostled her tiny frame into the crowd of taller high schoolers until she disappeared.

In his lap was a library book, laminated, with a ticket tucked inside indicating it had been checked out last week. “Beginner’s Guide to Palm-Reading,” the cover announced in swirling purple and gold font. The pages yellowed with each passing moment, felt thin, like a book that had been in circulation a few decades too long.

Bobby looked back to where the angry girl - whose name he didn’t catch - had been standing before.

He groaned loudly to himself, and then opened the book. There was no one around and nothing to do anyway.

For the next 45 minutes or so, he skimmed the chapters. There was a lot to this palmistry stuff, far more than any person could memorize in a week. Head lines, heart lines, life lines, fate lines...the length of one’s fingers meant something, and the shape of one’s palm, and one had to decide whether he wanted to look at his left or right hand straight off because one represented his past and the other his future. And it differed between men and women.

When the carnival was winding down, the court members had permission to leave their stations and try out as many rides as they could in the final hour. The other three suited court members burst from their booths to run for the Gravitron and the Paratroopers. Bobby looked for the angry girl. There were too many heads; he couldn’t find her. He wanted to apologize.

Finally he arrived at the brilliant idea to get on the Ferris Wheel and look for her from up high. When it was his turn, he planned to get on alone, but one of those bubbly girls with a name that started with K, he was pretty sure, hopped into his cart alongside him.

As the wheel squeaked and grunted around in its circle, and the girl whose name maybe actually started with N? stared at him smiling, Bobby was rude for the second time that day and said, “Look, do you know that short girl who got mad at me earlier? Where is she?”

Nancy-or-maybe-Kiki said, “She’s helping clean up one of the food booths. Then she’s heading home.”

Bobby burst from the cart as soon as it slid past the metal floor of the Wheel, leaving the gate swinging behind him and Kiki-or-Nancy alone. He dashed to every food cart, but found Amy nowhere - not near the pretzels, or the funnel cakes, or the cotton candy machine.

Then he spotted her. She was sitting alone at a picnic table, eating what was left of a hot dog, looking grim.

He walked over to her, his courage wilting out of him with every step. “Hey. I, um... I wanted to introduce myself, but I didn’t get a chance when we...met earlier. I’m Bobby.”

She didn’t look up, blue eyes downcast on the hot dog.

She didn’t say anything at all.

“Um. Cool hot dog,” he said, and wanted to punch himself in the face. Kept digging. “Where did you get it?” What kind of a question is that?

She looked up at him incredulously. “From the...from the hot dog stand.”

“Right, that, uh...that makes -“ and now he saw the dawn of a smile sinking in around the corners of her mouth. “Makes sense to me,” he finished uselessly.

She did something then which made Bobby’s heart stop its anxious apologetic drum-beating for just a moment.

She patted the bench next to her. Sit down, she seemed to say.

He sat.

They sat.

In silence. She chewed her hot dog.

“The freshman court kid bought this for me,” she finally said. “His name’s Paul. Seems very sweet.”

“What’s your name?” Bobby interjected.

“Why do you care, Robert Caron?”

“How do you know my - “

“Student council. It’s my job to know the court members, for one thing,” she said testily. “And for another, Kiki and Nancy never stop talking about you.”

“Really? So you think I got a chance with them?” He tested the waters of a joke, wiggling his eyebrows. She almost smiled before she could help it.

“Really, please - tell me your name. I feel awful about what I said earlier and I want to give you a real apology. Don’t leave me hanging like this, Cinderella.”

She laughed, quietly, but didn’t elaborate.

One of Bobby’s best traits was his resourcefulness, and another was his ability to remember things he’d recently read for short bursts of time. He reached out for her hand, and she jumped, and he said, “Can I show you what I learned?”

Blue eyes darting between his brown ones, she nodded, hesitant. He gently turned her hand over, unfurled her fingers like petals from a flower.

“So, this line here is your head line, and this one is for your heart. Your lines indicate that you uh, you try to use your brain in matters of emotion but your heart tends to win out in the end. As it should be, I think,” he smiled furtively. “And, um, so this one is your fate line, which not everyone has, actually, and uh, yours has this little break just a little ways up, which could maybe mean something happens to shift your fate in a new direction at a young age.”

“Like moving houses?”

“Yeah, it could definitely be a move. More often it seems like it’s supposed to be something romantic, but I don’t think that’s strictly necessary. And, uh, sometimes -“ he turned her hand sideways, looked at the edge of her pinky, “Sometimes people have lines here to indicate how many kids they’ll have, but you don’t really have any, so you might -“

“Not have kids.”

“Or you might just be too young to have hand wrinkles,” he said, and she laughed now, louder than before. It was a great laugh. Bobby wanted to hear it again. “Anyway, I don’t have those lines either, so I think maybe we’re just too young to know whether we’ll have kids or something.”

“Am I going to get married? Can you tell that?”

“If you look along this line,” he drew one finger over her palm, soft as moth wings, “This line says...well, uh, I don’t know, actually. Your hand doesn’t really look like the example hand in the book,” he admitted, “and normally the marriage part is much more clear. The fact that this line frays off here could mean you get married more than once, or something like that?”

“I’m gonna be a divorcee?!”

“Not necessarily, I don’t know!” Bobby yelped. “And anyway none of this is probably real but it seemed like it meant a lot to you and I wanted to...fix things. And it was kind of cool to learn about.”

She looked at him again, and her blue eyes shot a bolt of electricity through him, but not in a dangerous way - more like a defibrillator.

“Thanks, Bobby. I appreciate the apology. It was nice meeting you. And nice hearing about my future. As a childless divorcee.” Now it was his turn to laugh. She was getting up, tossing the napkins she’d used into the garbage can, and making her way to the curb, where a minivan sat idling. He couldn’t untangle his legs from the bench fast enough when he realized she wasn’t coming back to sit with him.

“What’s your name?!” he called across the courtyard, and a few dozen stragglers turned to look at him.

“Amy,” she said, and at that moment the last rays of sun burst through from behind a cloud, illuminating the whole carnival yard in the evening time.

“Amy,” he repeated. She was already in the passenger seat of the minivan, head leaned against the window, hiding an irrepressible smile.


	4. A Fortunate Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amy makes fortune cookies with her sweet old neighbor. The neighbor’s sweet young son comes home for dinner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like the idea of Bobby and Amy’s families being linked. Someday I’ll write a college AU with the full cast.

Amy’s father owned a Chinese restaurant, a warmly-lit one-room establishment that pulsed faintly with activity, a healthy blood cell in one of the arteries of New York City. She’d been working there, cooking and sometimes waitressing in those red cloth booths, since she was 16.

Her dad tried to teach her to put love into the food, to pad and fold each dumpling the way you’d caress the cheek of someone you loved. Amy tried. From her, though, love always came out crooked. The dumplings would crumple or tear or fall apart or lean precariously to one side. They were never kiss-round, hug-soft; they were always lopsided.

No matter. Amy, oddball, stuck to the odd jobs - running to the print shop to have more zodiac menus copied on ever-thinner paper. She’d trace a finger over the familiar description of the rat, picking out key words. Diplomatic. Charming. Indecisive.

She picked up the fortune cookies from their neighbor, who made them by hand in her kitchen. When Amy looked into the old woman’s eyes, sometimes she saw her future there - how her black hair might spin itself grey over time, the way straw spins to gold in fairy tales; how her brown eyes might crinkle when she laughed a croaking laugh; how she might develop careful hands if she kept trying hard enough. Sometimes she’d come over early, watch the old woman - Qiu - make the cookies, try her hand at a fold. Qiu never lost patience with Amy. She did insistently, quietly, call Amy by the name her mother and father had given her: Meihui.

Meihui - Amy - clipped the fortunes. They came out of a tabulated printer, like ticker tape, perforated every two inches. Amy sliced them apart with care. At the restaurant she was always a frenzy, a rapture of frenetic molecules in constant motion. Here she slowed. She read almost every fortune, thumbing the blue print, like touching the words would seep them into her skin, into her fate.

“Lucky numbers: 3, 10, 19, 31, 35, 70. What do you think, Qiu?”

Qiu smiled. “Those numbers will be luckiest for the person who actually eats the cookie. Give it here.”

There was some irony, they both knew, in producing these. Amy’s dad only did it because New Yorkers had come to expect fortune cookies with their Chinese food - invented by some anonymous Californian capitalist no doubt - but with Qiu at the helm there was a real art to it. It felt like something holy.

Qiu and Amy had been friends - 30 year age gap notwithstanding - for a long while before Qiu even mentioned she had a son around Amy’s age.

“Your - your what?” Amy spluttered, not sure she’d heard correctly.

“My son. Bobby. He’s a good boy. He goes to college.”

“Good for him.”

“You could go to college too, Meihui. You’re a smart girl.”

“I might. I’m only 18.”

Qiu nodded. “He’s coming home for dinner in 10 minutes.”

“Oh! Well, I can leave - “

“Stay,” Qiu smiled. “Meet my son. He will like you. Keep tucking those fortunes in.”

Amy kept at it, clipping off fortunes and folding them into the thin cookie dough, trying to inherit each fortune through the cells of her fingertips before she let it go. She became so focused she almost forgot about the upcoming visitors. Lucky numbers. Learn Chinese. Your honesty will win you luck. You bring happiness to others unknowingly. Trust in your instincts. You will meet someone important. Let love come in when it knocks.

And he knocked. He burst through the door, laughing, his black hair falling in his brown eyes, saying “Mama, is it okay that Paul’s staying for dinner - oh. Hello.” There was someone behind the laughing boy, someone taller, smiling, but quieter, skinny.

“I’m Bobby,” the shorter boy stuck out his hand, and Amy shook it.

“Amy.”

“Meihui,” Qiu muttered.

“So, uh, do you know my mom?”

“It’s the nice girl from the restaurant next door. She’s not in college yet. I am telling her she should go.”

Amy half-laughed at Qiu’s introduction, shrugging.

“Well, why don’t you?” asked the taller boy.

“I’m not sure what I’d study. I have no idea what I want to...do, or be.” She blushed. “What do you study, uh - “ 

“Paul,” and now he turned pink too. “I mean I don’t study Paul, my name is Paul, I study engineering, I’m an engineering major.”

Bobby cut in. “Please excuse him. He’s not used to talking to cute girls.”

“Wh- neither is he!”

“Yeah, that’s engineering majors for you,” Bobby shoved him, laughing with his whole mouth in a way that made Amy’s heart leap. Paul chuckled too, shoving his hands in his pockets.

They ate dinner together, the four of them, a motley crew if Amy had ever seen one - and it became a tradition. Sunday evenings. Sometimes Amy’s dad would come too. It continued while Amy went to college. She ended up going to the same one as Bobby and Paul, where she changed majors four times. (On record. Off-record, in harried 3AM conversations between her and Bobby and Paul, she changed it 18 times.)

It was Qiu who walked Amy down the aisle, at her wedding. The rings - carried on a red pillow by one of Bobby’s seven godchildren - were contained inside fortune cookies. Folded with love.


End file.
